"Learning Nothing From The Ghost Of Congress Past"

While we consider a possible war with Iran, here's something to keep in mind:

Andrew Bacevich, writing in The American Conservative:

There is a lesson to be learned from the Washington Post’s publication of the “Afghanistan Papers,” which chronicle the corruption, ineptitude, dishonesty, and strategic disarray that have marked the Afghanistan war since its earliest days. That lesson is this: when it comes to war, the American people and their elected representatives will do just about anything to avoid the truth.

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The uptick of interest in the Afghanistan war triggered by the Post is already subsiding. While perfunctory congressional hearings may yet occur, a meaningful response—one that would demand accountability, for example—is about as likely as a bipartisan resolution to the impeachment crisis.

This implicit willingness to write off a costly, unwinnable, and arguably unnecessary war should itself prompt sober reflection. What we have here is a demonstration of how pervasive and deeply rooted American militarism has become.

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Take seriously the contents of the Afghanistan Papers and you’ll reach a different conclusion: we have become a nation given to misusing military power, abusing American soldiers, and averting our gaze from the results. U.S. military expenditures and the Pentagon’s array of foreign bases far exceed those of any other nation on the planet. In our willingness to use force, we (along with Israel) lead the pack. Putative adversaries such as China and Russia are models of self-restraint by comparison. And when it comes to cumulative body count, the United States is in a league of its own.

Yet since the end of the Cold War and especially since 9/11, U.S. forces have rarely accomplished the purposes for which they are committed, the Pentagon concealing failure by downsizing its purposes. Afghanistan offers a good example. What began as Operation Enduring Freedom has become in all but name Operation Decent Interval, the aim being to disengage in a manner that will appear responsible, if only for a few years until the bottom falls out.

"Only the Top 20 Percent Has Recovered Since the Great Recession"

Isabel V. Sawhill and Christopher Pulliam at Brookings Institution, “Six facts about wealth in the United States”:

While the middle class has seen modest growth of 7 percent in their net worth since 1995, it has not yet recovered to its previous peak in 2007. This tepid recovery is driven by declines in home-ownership and stock market participation since 2007—if you do not hold assets, you cannot benefit from recovery in asset prices.

In contrast, the wealthy have seen robust growth since 1995 and have fully recovered from the Great Recession. Median net worth for the top 80th-99th percentiles has increased by 149 percent since 1995. For the top one percent, it has grown by 187 percent from a far higher base, making it difficult to even see the wealth of the bottom 99 percent on the following chart!

The “United States” may have “recovered” from the Great Recession, but We, The People have not. After the savings and loan scandal of the 80s destroyed middle class savings, the credit-fueled stock bubble of the 90s destroyed middle class investments, and the housing bubble of the 00s destroyed the value of the last remaining safe asset most middle class folks had, the “economy” could recover, but without a sweeping debt relief and jobs program, all of the growth was destined to go to the people who hadn’t lost much (And never mind the poor who don’t have a say).

"Trump repeatedly claimed in 2011 and 2012 that Obama would start a war with Iran to win reelection"

Andrew Kaczynski, at CNN:

Trump has consistently criticized Obama's Iran policy -- the chief accomplishment of which was an internationally negotiated deal reached in 2015 that lifted sanctions in exchange for Iran ratcheting down its nuclear weapons program. The Trump administration reimposed all sanctions in 2018.

But before that deal, Trump routinely asserted that Obama would force a confrontation to boost his domestic prospects.

“There’s a tweet for everything.” He doesn’t care about anything but his own image, no matter how poorly he manages it, and no matter how much damage he causes to anyone else or our country.

We have no reason to believe there was an imminent attack, and every reason to suspect this was a stunt to bolster support and distract from impeachment.

His own top aids are giving mixed reports. This assassination, like a lot of Trump’s most consequential actions, likely wasn’t coordinated across government (he doesn’t have the patience or attention span), leaving the Departments of Defense and State scrambling to pick up the pieces.

As Jay Rosen said on Twitter:

He doesn't know anything. He doesn't care to learn. He has no policy views. Nothing he says can be trusted. He's not good at anything a president has to do. His model of leadership is the humiliation of others. These should be the six starting points for covering his presidency.

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) January 7, 2020

"How Soleimani’s Assassination Violates International Law and Puts Peace Further Out of Reach"

Phyllis Bennis, of the Institute for Policy Studies, interviewed at The Real News:

It was indeed this notion that Trump claimed at his press conference that he acted to stop a war is completely a reversal of the reality. This act, this single act–the assassination of this particular individual, General Qasem Soleimani–was perhaps the most provocative, reckless move he could have made in relationship to Iran. This is somebody who was not just the top general for Iran’s–what’s known as the Quds Force, the Jerusalem force. That was mainly the Iranian military support for a number of militias in a variety of countries around the region, but he was also a very influential, very popular political leader.

In fact, in a recent poll a few months back conducted by the University of Maryland, inside Iran it turned out that he was, by a substantial margin, the most popular political leader in the country. So the notion that he could be assassinated without any consequence, that somehow this would make the United States safer, that this would make U.S. troops throughout the region safer, is a complete reversal of the reality. There is now an incredibly tense escalation process underway which could really lead to full-scale war there.

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The political response has to come from the Congress to reclaim our constitution. The constitution is vague about all kinds of things, but it’s very clear about at least one thing, which is that only Congress has the right to declare war. This war that is threatening right now was not declared by Congress. There was no imminent threat. Despite these claims, we have seen no evidence that there was an imminent threat even being considered or talked about…

This assassination not only represents violation of international law, a violation of U.S. law and immoral assassination that is specifically prohibited by a U.S. executive order that goes back to the 1970s, but it also undermined the possibility of averting continuing escalating tensions between the longstanding competitors Iran and Saudi Arabia…

Phyllis Bennis says Congress must stop Trump from taking the U.S. to war without any justification or provocation. Director/Video Editor: Adam Coley Audio Engineer: Bababtunde Ogunfolaju Visual Producer: Andrew Corkery Chase Producer: Genevieve Montinar Subscribe to our page and support our work at https://therealnews.com/donate.

"Precinct closures harm voter turnout in Georgia, AJC analysis finds"

Mark Niesse and Nick Thieme reporting for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Until her old concrete-block precinct shut down, Maggie Coleman lived about a mile from a place to cast her ballot in rural Georgia.

Now, she has to drive nearly 10 miles, past cotton fields and fallow farms, to reach the only voting location left in Clay County — a small room inside a government benefits building. She said she would have voted in last year’s primary election if it wasn’t so inconvenient.

Any time you hear that some district is closing or moving polling stations, you should immediately question where and why those polling stations were chosen. This is what "voter suppression" looks like: making it slightly harder for people to get to the polls. It's a death by a thousand cuts. In the US, a lot of elections are won on slim margins, and changing polling stations can change who wins and loses.

The AJC mapped Georgia’s 7 million registered voters and compared how distance to their local precincts increased or decreased from 2012 to 2018. During that time, county election officials shut down 8% of Georgia’s polling places and relocated nearly 40% of the state’s precincts.

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Precinct closures and longer distances likely prevented an estimated 54,000 to 85,000 voters from casting ballots on Election Day last year, according to the AJC’s findings.

And the impact was greater on black voters than white ones, the AJC found. Black voters were 20% more likely to miss elections because of long distances.Without those precinct relocations, overall Election Day turnout in last year’s midterm election likely would have been between 1.2% and 1.8% higher, the AJC estimated.

We should make voting as easy as possible. Election Day should be a fully-paid holiday (funded through progressive taxation, of course). Polling stations should be distributed to ensure ease of access for everyone. And election committees that decide the voting rules and polling locations should be as non-partisan and transparent as possible.

"Trump got what he deserved"

Ryan Cooper in The Week, on Trump’s (warranted, though narrow) impeachment:

It also bears mentioning that Trump is unquestionably the most personally corrupt president in American history. No previous president has continued to operate a vast business empire while in office, much less spend millions of dollars of public money at his own properties, or collect payments from dozens of foreign countries through them. Both behaviors are flagrant violations of the Constitution. Trump's protestations that his Ukraine actions were based on a genuine interest in "corruption" — the first and only time in his entire life (recall also that in his previous career in real estate, he routinely worked with mobbed-up businesses), and just so happening to involve his top political rival — are utterly preposterous.

Nevertheless, the House investigation also found multiple corroborating pieces of evidence. U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor testified that "our relationship with Ukraine was being fundamentally undermined ... by the withholding of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons." U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland (who was appointed after donating a $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee) testified that he had personally communicated the scheme to Zelensky: "I said that resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks." Alexander Vindman, a Ukraine specialist for the National Security Council, confirmed that there was "no ambiguity" about what Sondland was asking for — namely, an investigation into the Bidens. Another witness, State Department diplomat David Holmes, testified he overheard a phone call between Sondland and Trump discussing the demands.

Thanks in part to Democratic timidity, we haven't heard sworn testimony from several key players in the Ukraine conspiracy, including Giuliani, Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, and Vice President Pence, because the president forbade them from testifying. Trump himself has also refused to testify. If all this Ukraine stuff was so aboveboard as they all claim, why won't Trump allow them to testify and clear everything up? The answer is obvious.

Trump should have been impeached on his first day in office for his gross violation of the anti-corruption Emoluments Clause in the Constitution, let alone since then for his: refusal to do the work necessary of the office; appointing people just as corrupt as he is who loot the government agencies they lead; etc.

Trump richly deserves impeachment, but he’s a symptom of the larger disease. It’s an indictment of both the Democratic and Republican parties that it’s taken this long to get here. Both put party over country, the Democrats only caving once they sensed there was enough grassroots pressure, and the Republicans fighting impeachment with every trick they can to defend one of the most corrupt politicians in our history.

The current political class needs to be replaced by people who will fight for the common good, not narrow elite interests. And that’s only going to happen when more of us step up, putting more time in to change this system. At the very least, that should be paying more attention to what our “representatives” are doing while in office, and getting ready to vote the bums out when better people step forward.

Profile of Jubilee Baptist church

Here’s one particularly interesting case of a church turning itself around, re-orienting around community support and raising political consciousness from an explicitly anti-capitalist angle. At least one of the co-pastors is on Twitter—John Thorton Jr (@johnthorntonjr)—and worth following.

Anne Helen Peterson in Buzzfeed News:

On Wednesday night at Jubilee Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a group sits around the same sort of rickety conference table you’d find in churches all over the town, the state, the country. In the cabinets behind them, there are old Baptist tracts and stacks of New Testaments with covers declaring GOOD NEWS AMERICA, GOD LOVES YOU. But no one’s reading Galatians tonight. They’re reading Karl Marx.

“Let’s go around and introduce ourselves,” says Joe Stapleton, the high school English teacher leading the class. “Names, pronouns, how you’re feeling.”

Everyone opens their handouts — a section of Marx’s Capital, with handy summaries and annotations. They work slowly through the idea of use value versus exchange value and commodity fetishism. It’s most people’s first time with the material, and it’s admittedly a slog. At one point, after a particularly theoretical passage, someone exclaimed, “What the hell did I just read?”

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A year ago, the congregation, then called Ephesus Baptist, had dwindled from a solid membership of several hundred people in the ’90s down to just twelve regular attendees, the youngest of whom was in his fifties. The church had half a million in savings, but its demise seemed imminent. Then Georgas, the pastor at the time, had a wild idea: What if the church started over entirely and used the savings to help repay the debts of its members — and others in the community in need?

This September, Ephesus was reborn as Jubilee Baptist: a quasi-socialist, anti-burnout, anti-racist, LGBTQ-affirming church focused on debt forgiveness and worker solidarity. When I spent a week at Jubilee this October, it felt vital, and alive, in a way I have not experienced in over three decades of attending church. It doesn’t feel like a social justice club or particularly cool in any way. It just feels like a place where people genuinely care about other people — which, in the current landscape of American Christianity, can feel incredibly radical.

Book recommendation: "No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age" by Jane McAlevey

Power has slowly concentrated around the world since the end of World War II. We haven’t suffered inequality at this level since the late Robber Baron/Gilded Age era of rampant monopolization. The rights that communities and unions fought for and won (sometimes literally against the US military) a hundred years ago have been eroded by those at the top rigging every system against us. In “No Shortcuts”, Jane McAlevey, a longtime community and union organizer, lays out answers. She briefly covers early unionizing in the US and how the Red Scare broke it, compares the competing models of organizing being practiced now, then walks through a few recent cases—what worked, what didn’t. It's great stuff, and shows how powerful we, the masses, are: how ordinary folks a hundred years ago won labor protections; why labor fights have failed so often since mid-century; and how people are winning fights again by doing “whole-worker organizing”—building community among the workers in a workplace, and engaging every community those people are a part of, religious and otherwise. There’s power in numbers, and when the whole community supports a strike (like Chicago did for the teachers strike in 2012—bus drivers, parents, black churches, etc.), we win. It can be done. It is being done. And it’s the only way forward if we want a strong, lasting democracy that we all have a say in. A better world is possible when we come together. I highly recommend this book, as well as the plethora of talks McAlevey’s given which are on YouTube

Here’s the book: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/no-shortcuts-9780190624712

And here’s one of her excellent talks (of which there are many):

Jane McAlevey at the 4th conference on union renewal "Learing from our Struggles" (Rest of the conference was held in German) Braunschweig, 16.2.2019 Further information: https://www.rosalux.de/dokumentation/id/40012/